Christ The Cause of Division

Even when Jesus preached so sweetly his meek and loving doctrine there was a division among the people.

Even about himself there was a schism.

We may not, therefore, hope to please everybody, however true may be our teaching, or however peaceful may be our spirit.

We may even dread the unity of death more than the stir of life.

To this day the greatest division in the world is “because of him.”

I. THERE WAS A DIVISION AMONG NON-DISCIPLES.

We may view the parties formed in his day as symbolical of those in our own.

1. Some admitted none of his claims.

2. Others admitted a portion, but denied the rest.

3. Certain admitted his claims, but neglected to follow out the legitimate consequences of them.

4. A few became his sincere hearers, going as far with him as they had yet learned of him.

Let us view persons who have thoughts about Jesus with considerable hope. Though they blunder now, they may yet come right. Let us not frighten away the birds by imprudent haste.

Let us pray for those who deny his claims, and resist his kingdom.

Let us aid those who come a little way towards the truth, and are willing to go all the way if they can but find it.

Let us arouse those who neglect holy subjects altogether.

II. THERE WAS A DIVISION OF BELIEVERS FROM NON-BELIEVERS.

This is a great and wide difference, and the more clearly the division is seen the better; for God views it as very deep and all important.

There is a great division at this present hour—

1. In opinion: especially as to the Lord Jesus.

2. In trust: many rely on self; only the godly on Jesus.

3. In love. Differing pleasures and aims prove that hearts go after differing objects.

4. In obedience, character, and language.

5. In development, growth, tendency.

6. In destiny. The directions of the lines of life point at different places as the end of the journey.

   • This cleavage divides the dearest friends and relatives.
   • This is the most real and deep difference in the world.

III. YET WHEN FAITH COMES, UNITY IS PRODUCED.

There is unity among the people because of him.

1. Nationalities are blended. Calvary heals Babel.

   • Jews and Gentiles are one in Christ.
   • The near and the far-off as to spiritual things are brought near in him, who is the one and only center of grace and truth.
   • Believers of all nationalities become one church.

2. Personal peculiarities cease to divide.

   • Workers for Christ are sure to be blended in one body by their common difficulties.
   • Position, rank, and wealth give way before the uniting influence of grace.

3. Mental specialities feel the touch of unity.

   • Saints of varying creeds have an essential union in Christ.
   • Saints of all the changing ages are alike in him.
   • Saints of all styles of education are one in Jesus.
   • Saints in Heaven will be many as the waves, but one as the sea.
   • Ambitions, which else would disintegrate, are overcome, and laid at Jesus’ feet.

Let us divide, if there be a division.

Let us closely unite, if there be real union in Christ.

Confirmations

Christ, who is properly the author of peace, is, on account of the wickedness of men, the occasion of discord.—John Calvin.

There never lived any one who has so deeply moved the hearts of men as Jesus Christ has done. The greatest monarchs that ever reigned, the greatest warriors that ever fought, the greatest masters in are, or science, or literature, have never affected so many, and that to so great an extent, as Jesus of Nazareth has done. He has changed the course of the world’s history, and made its condition almost inconceivably different from what it would have been but for his coming. His teachings are received by the foremost nations of the earth. Millions of men call themselves by his name. He occupies the highest place in the esteem and affection of multitudes. For his sake men have lived as none others were able or willing to live: for his sake they have died as none others could or would have died.

But in proportion to the faith, the veneration, the love with which Christ is regarded by a portion of mankind, are the unbelief, the contempt, and the hatred, which others display towards him. The poles are not more widely sundered than are the sentiments of men respecting Christ. There is nothing about which they are more completely at variance. Do you sing, “How sweet the name of Jesus sounds”? To this day the Jew curses that name, and the infidel brands it as the name of an impostor. Do you regard Christ as worthy of your warmest love? There are those who regard him with a passionate hate. Satan himself cannot be more bitterly hostile to Christ than some men are.—P.

The union of saints results from union with Christ, as the loadstone not only attracts the particles of iron to itself by the magnetic virtue, but by this virtue it unites them to one another.—Richard Cecil.

I have seen a field here, and another there, stand thick with corn. A hedge or two has parted them. At the proper season the reapers entered. Soon the earth was disburdened, and the grain conveyed to its destined place, where, blended together in the barn or in the stack, it could not be known that a hedge once separated this corn from that. Thus it is with the church. Here it grows, as it were, in different fields; severed, it may be, by various hedges. By-and-by, when the harvest is come, all God’s wheat shall be gathered into the garner, without one single mark to distinguish that once they differed in the outward circumstantiality of modes or forms.—From “Parable, or Divine Poesy.”

Originating among the Jews, the Christian religion was regarded at first by great Rome as a mere Jewish sect, and shared alike in the impunity and the contempt with which that people were ever treated by their imperial masters. What did a Claudius or a Vespasian know, or care to know, of this new sect of Christians or Nazarenes, any more than of those other party names of Pharisee, Sadducee, Essene, Libertine, and the like?… Christ was then only “one Christus,” and the controversies between his followers and the Jewish priests only one of those paltry squabbles to which that restless people were chronically subject. By-and-by, as the young church became strong, it began to make its existence and its presence felt in the world, and then it stood in its genuine character and distinctive spirit face to face with Rome. Once met, they instinctively recognized each the other as its natural and irreconcilable enemy, and immediately a war of deadliest hate began between them, which was from the first one of extermination, and could terminate only by the fall of the one or the other. There was no room in the world for Christ and Caesar, so one or the other must die.

—Islay Burns.